What is the modeling level of Honor of Kings? Modelers reveal the 3D modeling process in depth.

　　Driven by the curiosity of many players about the production process behind Honor of Kings, we recently produced a skin reveal column, "Honor of Kings Reveal: How to Make a Skin," to answer professional and hardcore questions for summoners from the perspective of skin production. The third episode, "Skin Modeling Construction," explains from a modeler's perspective how a skin transforms from a paper concept design into a 3D model.

　　In the skin production process of Honor of Kings, modeling is a crucial step. In this stage, modelers must use spatial imagination and professional software to combine and transform points, lines, and surfaces from the original artwork, successfully building a 3D skin model. Through a series of processes, it becomes rich in detail and lifelike. Later, the actual in-game effects and collisions with other elements must be considered, making this stage time-consuming, typically requiring 350-450 hours to complete.

　　How to Make a Model

　　Honor of Kings' skin models are divided into external models and in-game models, depending on the scene.

　　External models generally appear individually, emphasizing high-quality presentation of skin design details, allowing players to have a more intuitive understanding of the skin's effects.

　　To perfectly showcase the external model effects, four stages of meticulous refinement are required: modeling, baking, texture mapping, and rendering.

　　Modeling

　　Modelers don't create the design in one go; instead, they follow a process of "simple to complex" and then "complex to simple."

　　Taking the Ice Frost Dance skin as an example, the ice-cast torso lines, ice crystal patterns extending to the face, armor patterns, and metallic textures are all meticulously crafted, creating a frozen soul from the north. Viewers can clearly feel that even with a frozen soul, Ganjiang's passionate emotions remain unshaken.

　　During the design process, modelers first study the shape and structural characteristics of the Ice Frost Dance original artwork and build a rough exterior, or rough model. At this stage, the basic outline of the Ice Frost Ganjiang is visible.

　　Next, modelers use specialized software tools to refine the rough model, creating a high-precision model that recreates the details of the Ice Frost Ganjiang original artwork as accurately as possible. High precision means the model has a large number of faces. The smooth and delicate surface is actually composed of tiny faces. The number of faces refers to the number of faces used to compose the model. The more faces a model has, the smoother the surface transitions when viewed up close, making the model appear more refined.

　　Baking

　　This model cannot be used directly because its high-precision model has over ten million faces, which would put too much strain on the performance of mobile games. Therefore, modelers need to further process the model, balancing in-game precision and a reasonable number of faces.

　　When making cakes, baking masters use molds to create various fancy desserts. Similarly, the completed high-precision model can be considered a mold. Modelers adjust and create a Ganjiang model with relatively fewer faces and use it to wrap the high-precision mold. Through software calculations, the mold information is mapped onto the low-poly model. After this step, the low-poly model has the same concave-convex structure and clothing details as the high-precision model, achieving a simulation effect of the high-precision model with a limited number of faces.

　　Texture Mapping

　　After the baked Ganjiang model is refined by the modeler, the modeler moves to specialized texture software to color the model and match the appropriate material effects to different parts of Ganjiang according to the original artwork design: slightly damaged white armor, shiny metal decorations, crystal-clear ice torso, and thick fur collar, etc. The addition of color and material effects makes the Ganjiang model more complete and realistic.

　　Rendering

　　After three stages of meticulous refinement, a lifelike, detailed Ice Frost Ganjiang appears. However, this is not enough. Just as a horse needs a saddle, the skin needs an external display. At this point, the modeler uses the engine to render and further enhance the lighting atmosphere and material effects of the model and display scene, integrating animations, special effects, and other related elements to finally present a pair of souls unafraid of snow and ice, in love amidst the frozen landscape.

　　The current effect is not the final version used in the game. Modelers strive to present a realistic 3D model and make various detail optimizations.

　　Modelers as Detail Obsessives

　　In addition to the basic production process, creating a realistic 3D model involves many tasks, such as repeated body adjustments, refinement of modeling details, improvement of rendering underlying technology, lighting improvements, and the addition of dynamic physical PBR materials.

　　Do you think that's the end? No, not yet. After meticulous detail optimization, modelers process areas not covered by the original artwork. For example, blind spots during drawing and the basic body shape hidden under clothing require modelers to use spatial imagination and professional knowledge of human body or clothing structure to complete the model, ultimately creating a rich and vivid 3D model.

　　The Collision of Modelers and Concept Artists

　　In the Honor of Kings skin production team, concept artists and modelers are closely connected roles, both aiming to create skins players love, but concept art and models differ in production methods and final applications.

　　This leads to a situation where modelers and concept artists are both comrades and rivals in the skin production process.

　　Seeing this, you might wonder why these seemingly inseparable partners have such a strange entanglement?

　　The answer is simple: their starting points are different.

　　For concept artists, they focus on creative expression around the skin's theme and style. It's not directly used in the game but serves as a visual guide in the skin production process. Therefore, concept artists pour all their ideas for the skin onto the paper.

　　As 3D models used in games incorporate animation, special effects, and programming technology, their development is complex. Besides visually recreating the original artwork as much as possible, practical applications must also be considered, such as the smoothness of interactions with monsters, minion waves, turrets, and other players during gameplay. Therefore, some aspects of the original artwork will naturally be adjusted by the modelers.

　　Of course, this can lead to some side-eye from the original artists.

　　The scene is as follows:

　　Original Artist: You cut out what I painstakingly designed?

　　Modeler: Nobody wants this to happen, but it conflicted with some game elements, so, you know...

　　Of course, such conflicts are often mitigated by the camaraderie built up over years of working together.

　　Original Artist: I've been watching Conan lately.

　　Modeler: I think your ideas are great. Let's discuss the design further.

　　Thus, under the influence of love and justice, they constantly compromise with each other, and this leads to more design inspiration, making the skins increasingly perfect, ultimately reaching a consensus between the original skin artwork and the 3D model.

　　As for the highly anticipated scenarios of the original artist using a deadly scissor kick or the modeler secretly employing a half-step madness technique, those are highly unlikely.

　　2.0 Model Optimization

　　To enhance the skin experience for summoners, the Honor of Kings 3D and technology teams are constantly exploring technological advancements. Creating more detailed and realistic models with better effects while using reasonable performance resources is a common challenge for mobile game 3D modeling and a goal that Honor of Kings skin production consistently pursues.

　　In early 2019, the Honor of Kings 2.0 version was launched, improving the quality of over 30 heroes and their skins through multi-dimensional enhancements to modeling, materials, lighting, special effects, and animation. From a 3D modeling perspective, after the 2.0 upgrade, skin models have a higher polygon count, allowing for more detailed reproduction of the outlines and volume transitions in the original artwork; more refined textures make the patterns on the skins clearer and more textured; and the new engine rendering makes the lighting on the skins more realistic, enabling the creation of special effects that were previously impossible.

　　The built-in soft light effect is also one of the improvements in the 2.0 version. It makes character faces softer, enhances the metallic texture of props, and makes the lighting more brilliant.

　　For Honor of Kings, the 2.0 upgrade is just the beginning. Improving skin quality and effects will be a long and continuous process. Thank you, summoners, for accompanying us along the way.

　　This article was first published on the King's Camp @ R&D Art Matters